Central Asia: Kyrgyzstan - Kochkor, the gateway to Song Kul

Our destination in Kochkor

As sis managed to get in contact with a person working in CBT and get a quote of price, we decided to go with CBT Kochkor. I did not receive any response from the other company up till now.

We thought that the CBT office was going through the door on the right of the photo, but no. That was a souvenir shop selling shyrdak (felt rug). We even thought the table at the end of the shop was the said CBT "office". Lol. Anyway, after checking with the shop owner/keeper, CBT office was next door.

To be exact, the "next door" means this white door on the right of the photo. It was locked when we were there. We waited for a bit before a driver came by and helped us called one of the CBT staff. About half an hour or so later, we sorted out our payment and decided to have lunch before going up the mountains. We were recommended to have our lunch at a cafe named "Visit".

We set off looking for this Visit cafe and was stumped that it was not easy to find. In fact we walked passed it thinking we have yet reached. Well, the reason was actually quite obvious. We are illiterate in Cyrillic scripts. Else we would've realise that "визит" reads as "visit". Hopefully when I finish blogging these Central Asia trip, I could read Russian characters. ^^

To be honest, the food was actually pretty good. Though it would be really hard to overlook the flies that zig zag all over the place. If you have internet connection, google translate's photo facility is pretty handy to assist with some guess work.

We ordered a laghman dish and pelmeni cooked with potato, cucumber and cheese (230KGS in total)... and the best conversation we had on this trip ensued.

In the midst of eating, sis stopped eating and looked up at me.
She said, "Do you bring Imodium?"
I nodded, "Yes, why?"
"Hmm... nothing much, I saw a fly crawled out from the laghman."
"Umm... ok. I didn't tell you earlier but I saw another one on the pelmeni pot when I opened the cover. "
"Oh.."
"...so, we continue (eating)?"
"Ya..."

Happy to report that both of us did not need the Imodium. ^^


Side note: Why are hazelnuts so expensive...